Altering prose

I remember in the mid-1980s doing blackout poetry (as it is now called — also known as found poetry, poetry in prose, altered prose, etc.) with my friends after learning about it from an English teacher. I’ve been a lover of words for as long as I can remember but somehow forgot about that fun hobby over the years. Recently I rediscovered it thanks to this beautiful thing called the world wide web, and so I grabbed my old falling-apart 50¢ paperback of The Scarlet Letter and started playing around again with these wordly treasure hunts after nearly three decades. And what a good time I’m having.

Here’s a photo of one of my first adventures. It reads: “Hester unadulterated. The end.” 🤣 Click to enlarge.

The problem with blackout poetry is the destruction of books which of course makes me cringe, but I’m intending to leave my books intact and not literally blackout many words so that the books are slowly turned into readable art. Some people make a copy of the page instead of modifying the actual book, which seems like a good idea as well.

This pastime is such a fulfilling creative outlet. To all the authors whose works I end up modifying, I offer sincerest of advance apologies. I will try my darndest to create new written art without disrespecting your original words (too much).

¡Viva la Oxford comma!

Professional editor Laura Poole

of Archer Editorial Services created

this “serial comma” hand signal.

¡Viva la Oxford comma!

“There are people who embrace the Oxford
comma, and people who don’t, and I’ll just say
this:  never get between these people when
drink has been taken.” —Lynne Truss

John Ruskin — first user of emoticons?

I’m pretty sure I see a winky face in Ruskin’s 1879 book Proserpina  ;)

Old Sage faux quotes collage

I saw this creative handmade advertisement in Prescott, Arizona on a bulletin board outside The Old Sage Bookshop. It’s a lovely shop with some awesome old books. Drop in if you ever visit the area, they’re at Whiskey Row. Click photo to enlarge. This adorable collage was made using The Unemployed Philosophers Guild Quotable Notables, which they sell in the shop. I bought the Edgar Allan Poe for bookshelf decor along with some vintage books.

Quotations about quotations

Recently I've been reading some fascinating books on the history and genre of quotations, most notably Quotology by Willis Goth Regier. I've also spent hundreds of hours improving the accuracy and depth of my “Quotations about Quotations” page on The Quote Garden by tracing down original works for verification and culling a couple of hundred new items not posted on any other website, both from the long-lost treasures on Google Books and from my own collection of dusty books. I am quite certain that I’ve accumulated over the past 26 years what is the world's largest collection of quotes about quotes. If not, it is certainly the most accessible large collection.

I found it exciting to learn that people have been taking delight in quotations — and struggling with misquotation — for centuries. Quotation anthologies have been around for ages, but according to Willis Goth Regier, “The watershed for compendia was in the mid‑1850s.” Imagine how much more abundant the watershed — or how much earlier — had the internet been around back in the day!

While researching the origin and context of the quotations, I would frequently get sidetracked reading antique gems of books and authors, stumbling upon some of the most amazing writing that is still sparkling and relevant up to this very day. I'd like to share one of my finds with you all. I was trying to locate the origin of this quote:

          “Shake was a dramatist of note;
          He lived by writing things to quote...”

Thanks to Google Books, I was able to determine the author as V. Hugo Dusenbury. The full poem was posted in the January 28th 1880 edition of Puck, and it is so good I resurrect it here 132 years later for your reading pleasure — click the image to view full-size. The entire Puck periodical, in fact, was brimming with cleverness and I spent quite a happy time perusing it.

If you’d like to browse my new and improved page of quotations about quotations, you can find it here: www.quotegarden.com/quotations.html. My most heartfelt gratitude goes out to all the ancient and modern persons who have pointed the way and left behind clues for where to focus my searches over the years which have led me to all these glorious “choice flowers, culled from the gardens of Poesy” (H.G. Adams).

Update, November 2012:  Thanks to Garson O’Toole, The Quote Investigator, I’ve learned that V. Hugo Dusenbury was a pseudonym of Henry Cuyler Bunner, the editor of Puck.

Short history of grammar: quotemarks

A few months ago I found this adorable comic drawn by Eric (a.k.a. Odysseus) titled “Short history of grammar: quotemarks.” I love it! His works are shared under the Free Art License which grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform. Click the image below to view in full size. The French translates to: “And that's how you were born...”

Update, February 2020:  Eric's website at the time of this blog post was lerelibre.net, but it's no longer a valid site and I've lost track of him. Eric, if you have a new website I can link to, please let me know!